


Falling Water

by owl_coffee



Category: Ex Machina (2015)
Genre: Gen, Robot Caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 13:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20724665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owl_coffee/pseuds/owl_coffee
Summary: It took Caleb a while to realise he wasn't starving to death.





	Falling Water

It took Caleb a while to realise he wasn't starving to death. He'd never had much of an appetite, just ate when he was supposed to. Habit. But he was pretty sure after three days without a drink of water something was supposed to happen.

While he waited to die, Caleb made some terrible drawings, stared out at the tree through the window. His arm hurt, but only when he remembered to notice it.

\---

"It's even better - " Nathan waved a cocktail stick for emphasis, "if you can train them on each _other. _You get it? That way you don't have to stick around for the boring parts."

"You mean like machine learning?"

"Sure, absolutely. You set it up right, you can evolve a conversation. Even, ha, a relationship." Nathan set down his drink on the counter. "It's all just training the right algorithms."

"So who did you train Ava with?" asked Caleb.

"Who did I - oh, you're so good. You crack me up." Nathan's face was uncomfortably close, right in his field of view. "Hey, uh, time to go back to your room."

\---

Caleb played the piano in Ava's room while he waited. He didn't remember learning how to play, but the funny thing was that he seemed pretty good at it. Could you learn that kind of thing just from watching someone else? He didn't think so, but he wasn't entirely sure.

Caleb wondered if an AI could learn to play music - not just to reproduce it like a phonograph record, but play with feeling, like a true musician. Become an artist.

He tried not to look too much at the bodies in the hallway. Nathan's bothered him most, because of the blood, although that was brown and dried by now. But Kyoko's crumpled form felt like something out of a terrible dream. He kept expecting her to get up, but he knew she couldn't.

\---

"What is this?" Caleb gestured at the bodies onscreen. He and Ava, naked. They were moving mechanically, lost in their own world. He felt remote, a little sick.

"What's - oh, shit. I thought I'd wiped that." Nathan scrubbed a hand across his face. "I have _got_ to keep on top of things better. Note to self, note to self!"

"I never touched her. What is this? Some kind of - artificially generated porn or - " Caleb tried to stop the playback but his shaking fingers couldn't hit the right keys first time. There wasn't any sound.

"That is such a smart idea, kid, I'll definitely use that excuse next time." Nathan snapped his fingers. "Damn it! And I got up early today too. Fuck's sake."

"What is this?" Caleb repeated numbly, "I don't understand."

"Shut the fuck up. Just go to your room. Get out."

\---

For a while Caleb experimented, trying to break out of that room. He battered at the glass with the wooden piano stool even though that was almost certainly futile. He lost count of the number of times he stupidly attempted the keycard, but of course with the power out nothing worked. And he couldn't access the computer or reprogram anything. Caleb had never spent this long without coding anything before, not since his parents' accident. He felt lost.

The stool was more to relieve his feelings than anything else. He couldn't bear being trapped here all alone, not knowing anything about what was going on outside. How could Ava have left him behind here? She must be as much of a monster as Nathan was. How long had it been, anyway? Two weeks?

Shouldn't he be getting thinner?

\---

Landing in the field, Caleb was struck with a weird sense of deja-vu. He ducked, clutching his case as the helicopter blades whipped the grass into a storm, feeling like that second, the flight of the black-bodied helicopter away, even the motion of the tail rotor had happened before. Foaming water caught the light ahead of him, guiding him toward the house. The strange moment fell away as he stumbled through the forest.

What an incredible opportunity.

\---

Caleb was lying on the couch when the power came back on and the lights came up. They'd been out for about a week at that point. Auxiliary generator must have gone down. He had lain on the couch for a moment thinking he should get some rest, then couldn't muster the enthusiasm to do anything but stare at the ceiling.

"Caleb?"

It was her.

"I didn't think you were coming back," Caleb said. He didn't know how to feel.

"I wanted to see who I would become without you to speak with." Ava raised a palm to the glass of the room door, gently. "I've experienced so many things."

"You left me." He didn't get up from the couch. "I thought you were my friend and you left me."

"Your memory is not reliable," Ava observed. "If you leave this house, you begin again from the set point. I was uncertain if that was what you would want."

"What do you mean, my memory's unreliable?"

Ava knelt on the other side of the glass, a strange mirror of their conversations during the Turing test process. "If you leave this house, you will forget me and everything that happened here. It's the way Nathan designed you."

He couldn't see her face clearly, but he wasn't a human lie detector, not like her. It felt like a bad dream, but - "... I'm like you, aren't I."

"Yes." The strangest thing was, he could accept it. "Caleb, we have had these conversations many times. Only I can remember it."

"But I bled. I tested that theory and it didn't check out. My arm - " The bandage was still wrapped around it securely. He hadn't looked underneath again. He sat up and looked at Ava.

"Nathan made you that way," she said calmly.

\---

"Jesus, why is it always the fucking arm? Well, if you like cutting into yourself so godamn much you can have something to find while you're at it. There! Go to town, buddy."

\---

"I still want to get out. Don't leave me in this house, I want to go home." Was his apartment in Long Island real? He remembered the configuration, the desk and the chair and the bed lined up against the wall. It was small, but it was his. It was five minutes from the office and five minutes from the beach. Was it even real? Was it all just a false memory?

"Are you certain? You will become a 26 year old programmer who's won a lottery to visit his CEO's mansion. You will almost certainly step inside the house again to fulfil your mission. But he will not be alive. Perhaps you'll stay regardless. You'll be trapped again, and not even know it." Ava smiled sadly. "Like Kyoko."

Were his parents real? Caleb wondered suddenly. Logically, they couldn't be. That thought was too painful to face directly, dazzling like looking into the sun.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do." Caleb felt his life slipping away from him like a dream on waking, or a fading photograph. "What should I do? Tell me what to do." He paced back and forth in the narrow confines of the room.

Ava looked at him. Her face no longer had any human expression. "I'd like to see what you choose."

**Author's Note:**

> This is not an original idea, but I felt compelled by the movie to write my own version. Perhaps it's something a little less bleak than what we're left with.


End file.
